yduJ and family visit Iceland

Ken had a conference in Iceland, and we all decided to join him at the
end of it for a vacation, including the kids. This was kind of too
many trips in a row, as it followed closely on the heels of two other
trips, but all of the trips were associated with some prescheduled
event that we didn't have much control over. Maybe next year we will
try not to have three vacations! Anyway, the kids were less
interested and helpful in the pretrip packing process then they had
been for earlier trips in the year, probably because they were not
really looking forward to the airplane. They did fine on it, and were
very cooperative during check-in and security and such, but I think
they are tired of trips and especially of airplanes.

We arrived in Iceland at 11:30 p.m., just as the sun was setting.
We were met at the airport by our guest house proprietor, and it was
really an awesome situation, as it had a kitchen fully stocked with
snack and breakfast foods, so we didn't have to figure out about money
until after we had eaten in the morning. Keflavik, which is where the
airport is, is a small town, but they managed to make it a complicated
town with construction projects, and we managed to get lost despite
having a map. But finally we acquired money and set off for Reykjavik
where we met Ken at the end of his conference. The apartment we had
rented was not yet ready for us, so we wandered around the area
surrounding a huge church at the top of a hill in the city center
(including a statue of Leif Eriksson) and admired the
beautiful organ inside the church.

This apartment had a kitchen. Although it was not prestocked with
food, in our earlier wanderings we had discovered a grocery store, so we
were all set. Our apartment was expensive, but it was very nice. A
great location, two bedrooms, and a nice couch in the living room.
Parking was a bit of a pain -- there was free on street parking in
some places, but sometimes hard to get a spot, and pay parking that we
never figured out the rules for due to not knowing the names of the
days of the week and so forth.

Perry is still obsessed with maps and directions, and so he always
wanted to go on a walk, especially if he could make a turn at every
block. Jocelyn was interested in swimming. There was a public pool
only about three blocks from our apartment. So often, and in
particular this first afternoon, we would have one adult go with
Jocelyn to the pool, while another adult went on a "random walk" with
Perry. Jocelyn particularly liked the fact that there was a separate
shallow pool so there was no danger of getting into the deep end of
the pool by mistake. She can dogpaddle, but not very effectively, and
is not yet confident in her ability to swim. Perry was very excited
by the strange names of the streets, and could tell you accurately
which ones intersected which other ones, and remember the long names
better than I could. (It wasn't nearly as bad as it seemed; Icelandic
is a Germanic language, and uses endings of words rather than separate
words, so once you learned a few of the endings that mean "street",
such as "gata" and "stigur", the rest of the name was often short
enough to remember.)

Our second full day in Iceland was our driving around the countryside
day. We did the typical tourist one-day drive, which includes
Thingvellir, Gullfoss, and Geysir. There was a certain amount of "are
we there yet" from the kids, as these places are a couple of hours
apart on not very good roads. Interestingly, the Icelandic speed
limit is pretty much always 90km/h, whether it is a four-lane highway
(two lanes each way -- they don't have any superhighways like we do),
or a 1.5 lane paved track. Unpaved tracks are 80km/h!

Thingvellir is the original site of the Althingi, which is the oldest
parliamentary body known, created in 930 (although not continuously in
operation). Unfortunately, it didn't have any permanent buildings
associated with it, but was rather a meeting of clans every summer,
and so there's just "we think that people put their tents here"
historical markers amongst the rocks. However, the rocks themselves
are absolutely fascinating. Iceland is situated at the far northern
end of the mid-Atlantic rift, where the American continental plate and
the European continental plate are separating at a rate of 1 inch per
year. This doesn't seem like much, but when it's rocks that are being
torn apart, it gets pretty interesting. There is a valley which is
about four miles across, which is the major rift, and at the edges of
this valley there are cliffs and cracks representing more recent
activity. The cliffs on the western (American plate) side seem newer,
less worn down, then the eastern side. I don't know why this is.
Thingvellir is located on the western side, with a natural
amphitheater made by these cliffs. Perry of course wanted to take a
walk, and this was met with great approval by various adults, who
wanted to see the countryside. A river runs through the valley,
opening out into a lake further south. (We didn't stop at the lake.)
I loved the way there were cracks that were one foot wide, and cracks
that were 10 feet wide, and cracks that were 100 feet wide. Kind of fractal.

Gullfoss is a huge waterfall on a river that leads down from the
Langjokull glacier. The water in the river is opaque, because
glaciers are dirty, and a lot of silt comes with the meltwater. The
river did not carve all of its own path, but is along one of the
cracks associated with the rift, and so in some ways it doesn't quite
look normal. The way it falls into the crack and then makes a sharp
left turn is just weird. We were able to walk out onto some rocks
that were very close to the actual falls. I'd been told that there
would be lots of dangerous places like this that you would never see
in the States, and had been a little worried, but they roped off a
safe area, so we just stayed within it, and neither of the kids seemed
to to be at all interested in testing that limit.

While we were at Gullfoss, we got to see some people on an Icelandic
pony trek. They had stopped to see the waterfall, leaving their
ponies in a corral provided for the purpose, and we got to see them
catching the ponies and saddling up. They go with a lot more ponies
than people, switching off periodically. People do pony trekking for
up to three weeks. I don't think I'd be up for it, myself.

We could see the glacier (in the background above), but to actually visit it would have taken
several hours. Ken got to visit the glacier on the tour day of his
conference, but he said the logistics of the trip and the extra travel
time weren't really worth the time actually spent on the
glacier. Bus tours tend to be that way.

Our final stop was Geysir, which as you might guess is a geyser, and
is in fact where the English word "geyser" comes from. The original
Geysir is no longer erupting, unfortunately, however, only a hundred
feet away is another geyser named Strokkur which is doing a bang-up
job of it. It erupts approximately every five minutes, although
sometimes you'll get a long delay and a big eruption or you'll get two
in a row with the second one smaller. Before it actually goes off,
there is about a minute of bubbling and swirling and little waves of
water washing out of the hole. On one of the blows that we watched we
got to see a mound of water about two feet high pulsating for a few
seconds right before it exploded high in the sky, which was really
cool. The first blow that we watched was a little scary, because the
wind was such that the water looked like it was about to land on us.
I grabbed Perry and rushed a few feet away. Fortunately nobody
actually got covered in boiling water -- I think it was just an
illusion that the water was going to land on us, but it was kind of
scary anyway. After that we decided to stand upwind! In addition to
Strokkur, there are dozens of holes in the ground filled with boiling
hot water, bubbling to themselves, sometimes quite noisily. I believe
that most of these were active geysers at one point or another.

We stopped for dinner in what looked like a medium-sized town on the
map, Hveragerdi, but really it turned out to be quite small. However,
the restaurant we ended up in, Kjot & Kunst, was very
interesting. The place
didn't look like much, but the food was quite good, and the
fascinating thing about it is that it was cooked with steam from the
earth. They use direct geothermal heat in their ovens. They also had
some conventional cooking equipment, but they'd let you know which
dishes (and even breads) were made with steam heat. We got to have
some traditional Icelandic dishes, including pony! They don't
actually eat very much horsemeat, which is actually kind of strange,
considering how many extra ponies they have. It turns out that there
are 100,000 Icelandic ponies in Iceland, of which only about 10% are
used for riding, and 1% are exported. The rest just hang around in
the summer, and get fed over the winter. Seems kind of nutty to me.
But, a few do get eaten! It was okay; kind of gamey.

All through the rest of our drive back to Reykjavik we saw steam vents
all over the hills, and in some places big metal pipes taking water or
steam from one place to another.

The next morning we had our usual swimming and walking. We didn't
have time for a whole pony trek, but Valerie wanted to try out these
ponies, so she arranged to have a shorter ride in the afternoon.
Meanwhile, the rest of us went to The Pearl, which is a sort of
strange tourist attraction. Its real purpose is a holding tank for
hot water. In Reykjavik, in addition to utilities like electricity
and gas, there is hot water, which is separate from cold water. It
comes straight out of the ground! I had heard about this too, and was
concerned about how smelly it might be, especially since Jocelyn
particularly dislikes smells. It turns out not to be a problem. The
smell is faint, and while you don't really want to drink the hot
water, it doesn't taste horrible. I've had worse from metropolitan
water systems in the U.S. In fact, even at Geysir, I didn't think the
sulfurous smell of the geothermal activity was very strong, and it was
right there. I remember from my childhood going to Mount Lassen in
California, where there was much stinkier bubbling mud.

Anyway, they need big storage tanks for the hot water up on top of the
highest hill in the city. And for reasons which escape me, they have
put some interesting architecture on top: this reflective dome visible
for miles (blindingly so when the sun glints on it). There's also an
observation deck, from which you can see pretty far. Unfortunately it
was very windy and cold, so we didn't really want to stay outside all
that long. Inside they had a four-story high atrium with a fountain
which was a fake geyser. It erupted every five minutes or so, and it
prefaced its eruption with some bubbling and wave stirring in a
moderately accurate representation of what Strokkur actually does. I
thought this was mildly amusing, and worth watching once or perhaps
twice, but Jocelyn thought it was the greatest thing since sliced
bread, and demanded to stay and watch many times. Perry, of course,
wanted to go for a walk, and the grounds had various trails and roads,
so off we went. In addition to the indoor fake geyser, there's an
outdoor fake geyser, which actually has hot water, and I'm not sure
how much of its eruption mechanics are actually mechanical like the
fountain vs. just having the superheated water "naturally" create the
geyser. There was an information panel about it, but it wasn't really
very informative.

We had hoped to go to the geothermal
beach, which is a constructed beach
with geothermally heated water piped in, and swimming pools and such,
but we spent so much time at the Pearl that we had to go get Valerie
from her ride. It was so cold and windy, though, that it's possible
the beach would not have been a good choice for that particular day.
I think the kids would have liked it, because Jocelyn loves any kind
of swimming, and Perry loves any kind of digging in the sand, but we
think they made an informed choice when we explained we couldn't go to
the beach if they spent too much time at the Pearl, and they didn't
seem at all sad about it. I was slightly disappointed, but I got over
it.

After picking up Valerie, we had a couple of hours before dinner time,
so we drove off northward towards some of the mountains, just to see
what we can see. The mountains around Reykjavik are unusual, because
they were formed by lava pushing up against glaciers, and thus they
are not the regular shape of a volcanic mountain, but have cut off
tops. Shortly, we came to a trailhead. We didn't walk very far up
the steep hill, but got somewhat of a view of the bay to the north of
Reykjavik. We had been kind of looking at these mountains wondering
about visiting them the entire trip, and just got a little taste here.

Our flight was at 5pm the next day, which meant we had part of the day
available for an activity. The obvious one was the Blue Lagoon, which
is the world's largest hot tub, created from the wastewater output of
the geothermal electricity generating plant. Conveniently, it is on
the way to the airport. Probably 90 percent of visitors to go on
either their first or last day in Iceland for that reason.

One interesting thing is that it has silica mud mixed in with the
water, making it entirely opaque. I'm not sure where this mud comes
from; the water itself comes from far below the earth before going
through the powerplant, so it's possible that the silica also comes
from deep down. Outside of the bathing area, the water is a very
bright blue; inside the bathing area it is a pale green because of
some algae. There is some idea that this silica mud is beneficial for
your skin, and an entire line of skin care products have been created
out of this theory. We declined to purchase any.

Another interesting thing is that the entire area surrounding the blue
lagoon is created from a very large lava flow only a few hundred years
ago, which is still very desolate, and kind of looks like the moon.
In combination with the bright blue opaque water, it doesn't look like
it belongs on this planet! (It was much bluer than is shown in these
pictures. It was really amazing.)

Once in the pond, there are hot spots in the water near the actual
output jets, so you can control your temperature by moving around in
the pond. There's one waterfall which you can stand under and have a
shoulder massage; unfortunately it's not wide enough for the demand,
so you have to wait in line and then you ought not to stay there very
long. It felt good while I was doing it. Because the water is
opaque, and the floor is uneven, it's a bit tricky to walk around
without falling down. Also, some places are shallow enough for the
kids to stand but others are not. They had water wings, but still
preferred to be in places they could stand. So there was a lot of
"can I stand where you are? How about over there?" So there was some
towing, which they are happy to do even in deep water.

Finally, we showered and headed off to fill the tank of the rental car
(I have no idea about gas prices: it was in Kroner per liter) and get
in the airplane. On the flight home we were treated to a beautiful
view of Greenland, complete with icebergs floating in the ocean, and
incredibly craggy glacier and snow-covered cliffs. Greenland looks
like it doesn't ever get any erosion: probably it never rains.
Perhaps after the glaciers all melt with global warming we will
discover that under the glaciers it's all smoothed out and completely
different from the mountains that stick up above them.

This mural was on the street on which we usually parked. The kids
liked it (and so did I.) Many houses in Iceland are colorful.

Stone piles like this were made by travelers for good luck -- a traveler would
add a stone to the pile when crossing dangerous lands (and there are a
lot in Iceland!) There were a lot of them. They seem similar to
Inukchuk made by the Inuit which we had seen in our Churchill trip.